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I have a lot of respect for Waymo's approach to this. While Tesla and Uber have both just recklessly (imo) jumped in and started setting loose self driving car

I have a lot of respect for Waymo's approach to this. While Tesla and Uber have both just recklessly (imo) jumped in and started setting loose self driving cars and making bold claims, Google/Waymo has really taken a slow and measured approach and given great care to making sure their cars are actually safe.

josefresco 9y ago
Google's approach is cautious, however has Tesla been reckless?
- csours 9y ago
  By describing and marketing driver assistance technology as self-driving technology.
  - TheAnimus 9y ago
    Which is kind of funny, because every pilot knows the limitation of each kind of autopilot. I think a lot of it is public expectation of that kind of name.
    - csours 9y ago
      Right, and if drivers read ALL of the fine print of Tesla Autopilot, they would have been informed of the limitations of that system as well. The problem comes when the Large Print promises things that the system does not do. Another problem came from the implementation of the system where Tesla did not verify that the driver maintains hands on the wheel.
      - marvin 9y ago
        The large print says to keep your hands on the steering wheel and be prepared for the autopilot to fail or disengage at any time. I don't see how this is promising a self-driving car?
        csours 9y ago
        It does now, but in previous versions it did not.
        legolas2412 9y ago
        And even now, the popular perception is that Tesla is autonomous, and it is only the regulations holding them back.
- foolfoolz 9y ago
  googles cars have gotten in a few fender benders and side swipes people have died using teslas autopilot
  - sovnade 9y ago
    That also could be because autopilot is only usable on highways (IIRC) and the fatality rate per accident on highways is much higher than standard town/city driving. Either way there's not nearly enough data to draw conclusions from.
    - Siecje 9y ago
      Autopilot won't stop at stop signs or stop lights, so it is not as useful when not on highways. Just to clarify the downvotes. Highway driving is safer.
    - euyyn 9y ago
      Google's self-driving cars started on highways (easier problem to tackle) before moving on to city streets.
  - QuercusMax 9y ago
    There was only one accident I'm aware of in which the Waymo vehicle was at fault; the vast majority have been humans doing stupid things like rear-ending them at stop lights and t-boning by running a red light. (Disclaimer: I work for an Alphabet company.)
    - maverick_iceman 9y ago
      Humans will do stupid things. A self-driving car has to drive safely in spite of them.
      - QuercusMax 9y ago
        How do you avoid being rear ended at a stoplight? There may be ways to avoid some of the other types of accidents, but those ones (which have happened several times) are difficult to escape. The real question is what's the safety threshold - safer than median human? 90th percentile? 99th?
- maxfurman 9y ago
  Arguably. Tesla has not done a good job educating their customers on the limits of their "Autopilot" system, which has led to at least one preventable death. https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/07/28/tesla_autopilot_death_driver_was_speeding/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/07/28/tesla_autopilot_dea...
  - greglindahl 9y ago
    Where's the proof that it was a driver education problem? This argument gets rehashed every month or so here on HN.
    - dmix 9y ago
      Not to mention basing this on a single data point where a fatality occurred. How about the tens of thousands of other drives vs standard? That would at least be statistically relevant. Even though what they released isn't a self-driving car but a glorified cruise control. I personally don't really see how that is reckless at all.
    - vkou 9y ago
      Well, every time this discussion comes up, HN spends >100 posts splitting hairs as to what calling their system 'autopilot' implies. Given that the technology is useless if you use it as 'intended' (Be aware, and in control of your vehicle 100% of the time[1]) I don't think this debate will be settled anytime soon. [1] My 97 Avalon drives just fine when operated under those conditions.
  - Spare_account 9y ago
    Is it possible to extrapolate from the recorded reduction in accidents after the introduction of autopilot and work out if fewer people have died as a result of introducing when they did? Here's an article which describes a 40% drop in the accident rate: https://electrek.co/2017/01/19/tesla-crash-rate-autopilot-nhtsa/ https://electrek.co/2017/01/19/tesla-crash-rate-autopilot-nh... The NHTSA's figures show a drop from 1.3 crashes per million miles before Autosteer to 0.8 crashes after Autosteer. Would any of those crashes have been fatal? I don't have the numbers to answer that but I posit that introducing Autopilot has prevented more deaths than it has caused.
aianus 9y ago
Killing a few extra people today to bring self driving cars to market faster could actually save more lives in total. I have much more respect for Tesla for shipping something.
- maxerickson 9y ago
  The system that killed people didn't represent a point of progress for their self driving tech. They decided to abandon the hardware package it was using. Their current implementation doesn't seem to be learning any higher level behaviors (there's a Youtube video of guy using it in a park where it repeatedly accelerates towards islands in the road and then flails off the road as it goes too fast around the island).
  - Siecje 9y ago
    Do you have a link to the video?
    - maxerickson 9y ago
      First couple minutes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZ1XLqc5IUg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZ1XLqc5IUg
      - brilliantcode 9y ago
        wow...this is pretty scary. Imagine if the video didn't have the friendly European accent and patches of green. Imagine if that was a real life scenario and the greens were a hazard. I wonder if there are more such videos that show Tesla Autopilot freaking out. It would be an eye opener, Tesla's stock price is dependent on Autopilot among other innovations.
    - dangrossman 9y ago
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZ1XLqc5IUg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZ1XLqc5IUg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYav3_7miIc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYav3_7miIc
nashashmi 9y ago
Uber and Tesla have had to play catch-up to Waymo. This kind of approach is reckless but also is run-before-crawl. The outfall is that it led to bad PR for self-driving cars.
- dmix 9y ago
  > The outfall is that it led to bad PR for self-driving cars. Bad PR? Example? I haven't seen much negative spin on self-driving cars in mainstream coverage recently. If anything it's been highly optimistic while still being honest by mentioning the difficulties the companies are trying to overcome. I don't think people are under-estimating the challenge here, even the layman. But the potential ROI when it does work would dramatically be safer, environmentally friendly, and efficient with human time. Given the current state of driving is highly dangerous, we'd benefit from iterative progress towards self-driving cars, ala what Tesla is doing. Controlling risks doesn't have to mean holding tech back until it's perfected.
MarkMc 9y ago
Actually I think Waymo is too cautious. Tesla has thousands of customers effectively acting as test drivers for their autonomous software, which allows them to collect data at a much faster rate and discover more 'edge cases' than with a more cautious test environment. 33,000 people die each year on US roads and self driving cars offer the chance to dramatically reduce that figure over time. The more aggressively we can test self-driving software now, the faster the software can be improved. So as long as the accident rate for autonomous Teslas is initially no more than for human drivers, the Tesla approach will lead to fewer deaths in the long run.
- pps43 9y ago
  Self driving cars also offer the chance to dramatically increase that figure. They have failure modes that do not exist with human drivers. Cautious is good.
- Animats 9y ago
  Tesla no longer sells cars with automatic driving capability. The hardware is there on newly shipping cars (although the sensor suite is weak) but it's not active. There's a lawsuit.[1] It's unlikely that Tesla gets much useful data from vehicles. To debug a vision system, they'd need the camera data from all the cameras, and that's too big to upload over the cell phone data link. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/brookecrothers/2017/04/23/tesla-dinged-autopilot-lawsuit-recall-and-supercharger-apocalypse/#43579f76118d https://www.forbes.com/sites/brookecrothers/2017/04/23/tesla...
  - kcorbitt 9y ago
    They don't need all the vision data -- likely what they're doing is running their beta self-driving features in the background all the time, and only send data back (1) when the driver's input differs dramatically from what the self-driver would have done itself, presumably because the driver saw something their software missed, and/or (2) when a driver gets in a crash (at which point they can check if their algorithm would have prevented the accident). They just need to send back data from a few seconds before either of those scenarios to quickly accumulate a giant library of one-in-a-million edge cases they can test future algorithm tweaks against. I think it's a reasonable strategy.
bluthru 9y ago
>While Tesla and Uber have both just recklessly (imo) jumped in and started setting loose self driving cars and making bold claims Do we know how many lives have been saved from Tesla's autopilot? I've only seen anecdotes but I get the impression that it's already a big net win for safety.

josefresco 9y ago

Google's approach is cautious, however has Tesla been reckless?

csours 9y ago
By describing and marketing driver assistance technology as self-driving technology.
- TheAnimus 9y ago
  Which is kind of funny, because every pilot knows the limitation of each kind of autopilot. I think a lot of it is public expectation of that kind of name.
  - csours 9y ago
    Right, and if drivers read ALL of the fine print of Tesla Autopilot, they would have been informed of the limitations of that system as well. The problem comes when the Large Print promises things that the system does not do. Another problem came from the implementation of the system where Tesla did not verify that the driver maintains hands on the wheel.
    - marvin 9y ago
      The large print says to keep your hands on the steering wheel and be prepared for the autopilot to fail or disengage at any time. I don't see how this is promising a self-driving car?
      - csours 9y ago
        It does now, but in previous versions it did not.
        legolas2412 9y ago
        And even now, the popular perception is that Tesla is autonomous, and it is only the regulations holding them back.
foolfoolz 9y ago
googles cars have gotten in a few fender benders and side swipes people have died using teslas autopilot
- sovnade 9y ago
  That also could be because autopilot is only usable on highways (IIRC) and the fatality rate per accident on highways is much higher than standard town/city driving. Either way there's not nearly enough data to draw conclusions from.
  - Siecje 9y ago
    Autopilot won't stop at stop signs or stop lights, so it is not as useful when not on highways. Just to clarify the downvotes. Highway driving is safer.
  - euyyn 9y ago
    Google's self-driving cars started on highways (easier problem to tackle) before moving on to city streets.
- QuercusMax 9y ago
  There was only one accident I'm aware of in which the Waymo vehicle was at fault; the vast majority have been humans doing stupid things like rear-ending them at stop lights and t-boning by running a red light. (Disclaimer: I work for an Alphabet company.)
  - maverick_iceman 9y ago
    Humans will do stupid things. A self-driving car has to drive safely in spite of them.
    - QuercusMax 9y ago
      How do you avoid being rear ended at a stoplight? There may be ways to avoid some of the other types of accidents, but those ones (which have happened several times) are difficult to escape. The real question is what's the safety threshold - safer than median human? 90th percentile? 99th?
maxfurman 9y ago
Arguably. Tesla has not done a good job educating their customers on the limits of their "Autopilot" system, which has led to at least one preventable death. https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/07/28/tesla_autopilot_death_driver_was_speeding/ https://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/07/28/tesla_autopilot_dea...
- greglindahl 9y ago
  Where's the proof that it was a driver education problem? This argument gets rehashed every month or so here on HN.
  - dmix 9y ago
    Not to mention basing this on a single data point where a fatality occurred. How about the tens of thousands of other drives vs standard? That would at least be statistically relevant. Even though what they released isn't a self-driving car but a glorified cruise control. I personally don't really see how that is reckless at all.
  - vkou 9y ago
    Well, every time this discussion comes up, HN spends >100 posts splitting hairs as to what calling their system 'autopilot' implies. Given that the technology is useless if you use it as 'intended' (Be aware, and in control of your vehicle 100% of the time[1]) I don't think this debate will be settled anytime soon. [1] My 97 Avalon drives just fine when operated under those conditions.
- Spare_account 9y ago
  Is it possible to extrapolate from the recorded reduction in accidents after the introduction of autopilot and work out if fewer people have died as a result of introducing when they did? Here's an article which describes a 40% drop in the accident rate: https://electrek.co/2017/01/19/tesla-crash-rate-autopilot-nhtsa/ https://electrek.co/2017/01/19/tesla-crash-rate-autopilot-nh... The NHTSA's figures show a drop from 1.3 crashes per million miles before Autosteer to 0.8 crashes after Autosteer. Would any of those crashes have been fatal? I don't have the numbers to answer that but I posit that introducing Autopilot has prevented more deaths than it has caused.

aianus 9y ago

Killing a few extra people today to bring self driving cars to market faster could actually save more lives in total. I have much more respect for Tesla for shipping something.

maxerickson 9y ago
The system that killed people didn't represent a point of progress for their self driving tech. They decided to abandon the hardware package it was using. Their current implementation doesn't seem to be learning any higher level behaviors (there's a Youtube video of guy using it in a park where it repeatedly accelerates towards islands in the road and then flails off the road as it goes too fast around the island).
- Siecje 9y ago
  Do you have a link to the video?
  - maxerickson 9y ago
    First couple minutes. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZ1XLqc5IUg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZ1XLqc5IUg
    - brilliantcode 9y ago
      wow...this is pretty scary. Imagine if the video didn't have the friendly European accent and patches of green. Imagine if that was a real life scenario and the greens were a hazard. I wonder if there are more such videos that show Tesla Autopilot freaking out. It would be an eye opener, Tesla's stock price is dependent on Autopilot among other innovations.
  - dangrossman 9y ago
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZ1XLqc5IUg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZ1XLqc5IUg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYav3_7miIc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYav3_7miIc

nashashmi 9y ago

Uber and Tesla have had to play catch-up to Waymo. This kind of approach is reckless but also is run-before-crawl. The outfall is that it led to bad PR for self-driving cars.

dmix 9y ago
> The outfall is that it led to bad PR for self-driving cars. Bad PR? Example? I haven't seen much negative spin on self-driving cars in mainstream coverage recently. If anything it's been highly optimistic while still being honest by mentioning the difficulties the companies are trying to overcome. I don't think people are under-estimating the challenge here, even the layman. But the potential ROI when it does work would dramatically be safer, environmentally friendly, and efficient with human time. Given the current state of driving is highly dangerous, we'd benefit from iterative progress towards self-driving cars, ala what Tesla is doing. Controlling risks doesn't have to mean holding tech back until it's perfected.

MarkMc 9y ago

Actually I think Waymo is too cautious. Tesla has thousands of customers effectively acting as test drivers for their autonomous software, which allows them to collect data at a much faster rate and discover more 'edge cases' than with a more cautious test environment. 33,000 people die each year on US roads and self driving cars offer the chance to dramatically reduce that figure over time. The more aggressively we can test self-driving software now, the faster the software can be improved. So as long as the accident rate for autonomous Teslas is initially no more than for human drivers, the Tesla approach will lead to fewer deaths in the long run.

pps43 9y ago
Self driving cars also offer the chance to dramatically increase that figure. They have failure modes that do not exist with human drivers. Cautious is good.
Animats 9y ago
Tesla no longer sells cars with automatic driving capability. The hardware is there on newly shipping cars (although the sensor suite is weak) but it's not active. There's a lawsuit.[1] It's unlikely that Tesla gets much useful data from vehicles. To debug a vision system, they'd need the camera data from all the cameras, and that's too big to upload over the cell phone data link. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/brookecrothers/2017/04/23/tesla-dinged-autopilot-lawsuit-recall-and-supercharger-apocalypse/#43579f76118d https://www.forbes.com/sites/brookecrothers/2017/04/23/tesla...
- kcorbitt 9y ago
  They don't need all the vision data -- likely what they're doing is running their beta self-driving features in the background all the time, and only send data back (1) when the driver's input differs dramatically from what the self-driver would have done itself, presumably because the driver saw something their software missed, and/or (2) when a driver gets in a crash (at which point they can check if their algorithm would have prevented the accident). They just need to send back data from a few seconds before either of those scenarios to quickly accumulate a giant library of one-in-a-million edge cases they can test future algorithm tweaks against. I think it's a reasonable strategy.

bluthru 9y ago

>While Tesla and Uber have both just recklessly (imo) jumped in and started setting loose self driving cars and making bold claims Do we know how many lives have been saved from Tesla's autopilot? I've only seen anecdotes but I get the impression that it's already a big net win for safety.